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by Rrit
Summary: Tom needs the Wizarding World. He takes it in like water - needing something to fill his gaping, cold emptiness. He needs magic. Too bad the Wizarding World doesn't particularly care for impoverished orphans.


**A/N: Beater 1 for the Ballycastle Bats reporting for duty. My headcanon prompt for this round is from Fai's Smile of the Montrose Magpies: Voldemort can pass through the Dursley's blood wards. The prompt makes me a little uncomfy (poor Harry) so I centered the fic more as a biopic of Voldy.**

 **Prompts used: (word) possible, (first line) she lives for disbelief, (dialogue) you have his eyes.**

* * *

She lives for disbelief. Merope opens her eyes to a dizzy feeling in her stomach, a joy that sends a giddy fire from the base of her spine to the tips of her fingertips. She lives in disbelief.

This isn't her life: a wonderful dream.

And then she wakes up, screaming silently.

Narrowed eyes, pinched cheeks, invisible lips.

Her mouth is as wide as she can manage, sucking in air and blowing it out. She can't scream loud enough; can't hear herself. She feels filthy, feels hands and grazes and stinging spells. Bones broken, lilac bushes, and the crushing presence of pure blood - of magic.

She hears misery in the silence, in the sucking blackness that pulls the sweat from her face, tightening her skin till she's sure her face is set to pop. Wouldn't that be fun - red, red, red. But then the blackness recedes into a smoother navy and the odd shapes of the inn's furniture comes into fuzzy focus.

The easy breathing beside her keeps her grounded. Taking a rough hand, she pushes the bangs out of her husband's beautiful face. Tom, she reminds herself, would never do that to her. He would never let that happen to her.

Merope goes giddy remembering the man at the inn's bar Tom had gallantly punched out. Butterflies started up in her stomach and she couldn't help the contentment washing over her. Tom loved her, he protected her, and he was beautiful.

She ran the tips of her fingers over his nose, his lashes and paused on his cheek. Yes, this man was everything. He chased away the darkness and there was nothing Merope loved more than that. He wasn't fully comfortable with magic but neither was Merope - she couldn't look at her stupid, ancient wand without thinking of her father.

No, Merope hadn't touched her wand since Morfin left.

She wished, when the candles were low enough and the darkness felt like magic, that she wouldn't mind burning the stupid stick. See how well centuries of familial prestige combats cheap vodka and fire.

Soft lashes fluttered open under her hand and soon the adoring face she treasured so looked up at her. She could see it in his eyes - there was nothing else he would have prefered to wake up to. She was as much his as he was hers.

Merope missed the foggy haze that lingered behind his irises long after the grogginess of morning passed. She couldn't see it beyond the crystalline blue and the love.

* * *

Twelve years later…

He kept his head down and his fingers curled out of sight. He had thirty more seconds to make it to the potions classroom before Dumbledore let out his second year transfiguration class. Tom Riddle couldn't pinpoint a time when children didn't target him. Coming out of Wool's orphanage into London made Tom immune to the drunk taunts, the snooty stares. However, personal vendettas were a little harder to manage.

He should have known better. He should have known. He should have.

It wasn't Tom's fault twelve year old boys are self-conscious. And if Tom was really being honest, he would admit that he noticed some psychological scarring on his aggressor. Probably due to childhood neglect, maybe even abuse.

Tom liked pushing buttons. But Tom usually didn't like what came next.

Increasing his brisk pace, Tom counted down the seconds under his breath.

The problem with being a first year was inexperience. Specifically, magical inexperience. Tom wanted to turn around and bash the boys into their rib cages, he wanted to string up their purebreed 20-gallon owls and tie their intestines around their neck. But he was a first year with little to no social support should things go pear shaped.

None of the teachers knew him, the student's didn't respect him - not as a peer, not as an intellectual. Before he could work to unravel the fabric of Gryffindor's social hierarchy, he needed a safety net. Insurance.

Too slow; the old man Dumbledore let his kids out early and soon kids came pouring into the empty courtyard Tom was about to pass. Maybe Crawley won't notice. He did.

Tom arrived at potions five minutes late with bruising on his chest. There was something tragic about his thirsty, desperate need for magic. He wanted the cloaks, wands, the power, the identity of the Wizarding World so much it pounded his heart out. He felt incomplete, like without magic there would be nothing to fill the hole inside that he was never truly aware of before. Separating Tom and magic, once welded together, is not possible.

Now that he had experienced fulfillment he refused to let go. He needs the Wizarding World but the Wizarding World doesn't particularly care for impoverished orphans.

* * *

The best time of the day, in Tom's opinion, was the precise moment before the sun sets. The half-an-hour where the world, the sky, glanced over the edge, riding the cusp of something that confused Tom. It made him feel less alone, less like one in a million.

Looking over the lake's shimmery surface, a black shape caught Tom's eye.

A crow, hopping along the shrubbery. A glaringly non-magical creature, inferior to even flobberworms if infinitely more majestic.

The rush of anticipation came, the tide going out, and sweeping up Tom's gut. Tom couldn't draw his eyes away from the common bird to focus on the work and annoying girl before him.

The tide inside Tom's heart came crashing, the same thud-thud that magic gave him reappeared to grace him, reminding him of everything he could stand to gain and exactly what he had to lose.

A home.

Without warning, the bird took flight, airborne, sailing out above trees and away from Tom.

The girl from before was still talking with her eyebrow furrowed in an annoyed wave.

Her eyes watched him skeptically. _Distracted mudblood. him_. he could hear her thoughts.

Tom clutches at his leatherbound journal, curling his fingers, biting his nails into its binding.

* * *

Tom visited a miserable shack on his summer holiday.

He checked out a local manor. Saw the miserable sights, ignored the ramshackle people.

All in all, he left pleased - a new ring hugging his left knuckle.

When he closed his eyes at night, his paternal grandmother's voice circled into his conscious.

"Good God, you have his eyes."

There are worse last words.

* * *

Twirling his wand carelessly between his long fingers, Tom watched the sniveling boy paw at Dumbledore's door. What to do, what to do. Too large for his robes, too big for doorways, too different for Hogwarts and with a simple outlook to match. Tom sympathized in a way - he knew cruelty and ostracization.

Most of all, he knew the desire festering in Hagrids stomach: for magic, for kindness.

The difference: Dumbledore's door swung open and warm light immediately bathed the teary half-giant. The wretched boy was shuffled in quickly, and with something Tom (could only assumed) was love.

With that circling his mind, Tom slunk back around to finish his perfect rounds, filing away the overgrown boy with the tears.

* * *

Tom found himself in the orbit of Minnie McGonagall. A year above him, she was a comforting presence in the library, if only due to familiarity.

She gave him a look. One that maybe, maybe in a hundred years, he would abandon his plan for the future and walk over, say hi and start a conversation. Tom didn't believe in absolute guarantees but he was fairly sure he could woo her over in a heartbeat. She liked quidditch, magic, marigolds, studying, and friends.

She was wearing a marigold, weaved into her plait.

She also had a penchant for experimental magic. That last one was the real kicker.

Tom liked magic too.

Perhaps the look Tom gave her told her the same thing that hers suggested to him because she was walking over, lifted up all her supplies, and was making her way to his table.

Flattering really.

She asked permission to sit, and he smiled in response. He may have overdone the ratio between charming and studious peer but she kept her distance. Good.

A couple words over a spell, some exchanges over a shared class.

Tom really doesn't know why he still remembers her. Cat hair on her robe, hair plaited back.

The mysterious Minnie - who really wasn't a mystery in the first place.

Marigold girl.

* * *

Five years pass.

He's holding court, he's holding magic, and finally, finally, finally he feels complete.

The swirling, gaping emptiness is assuaged. Power, pure influence and power ward away the coldness that haunts the tips of his fingers, which freeze in the night.

This feels right

* * *

October, in some forgettable town. The lawns look pedestrian and the houses too quaint. The town embodies domestic life and Tom's never felt more uncomfortable.

It's 1980 and Tom feels pain beyond anything.

He's walking up stares, he's talking and then hes on fire. The cold bites back into his fingers and reaches into his chest. Fire, cold, and the unforgiving tide that explodes his existence, fragmenting his mind, body, and soul.

* * *

Quintus Quirrel, Quinty by friends, appears to be the modicum of mediocrity. He has some friends, an on-and-off girlfriend (that Tom later does away with) that keep him rooted in the glut/trenches of humanity.

He has fears and perversions. He likes being tied up, feeling powerless so it's really quite easy for Tom to come knocking on the door in his mind's eye. Tom's mental presence is dominating, reassuring in its absolute power, and overwhelmingly male.

Quirrel lets Tom right in and Tom wastes no time taking root, digging up the useless bits of Quirrell's life and memories.

Tom feels the surge and swirl that has haunted him all his life but rooted in the mind of Quinty Quirrell, the urge feels far away.

Soon, Tom will explode Quirrell, decimate him like how his body was once stolen from him.

Harry ends up _incinerating_ Quirrell with _love_.

Tom - long since having become Voldemort - feels twelve again. He feels his _fury_ , the ebbing tide of _anger_ , lapping in warning at his shores.

* * *

1995

Tom enters Harry's home with the subtlety of a scorned lover, bursting the lock quickly and with a small bang. He's alone this time, no fumbling death eaters at his back. No, Harry is far to personal to share - his death is for Tom alone.

Voldemort has thought of countless methods of how to finally dispatch Harry Potter - burning, horse and quartering, flaying, strangling, or perhaps inflicting a poor mimicry of the pain Tom endured, the searing cold that tore open his heart and lungs, which ripped at his soul an his atoms.

xxx

The relatives are out for the weekend. _Muggles_ , Voldemort snears as he crosses the threshold. The weak pulse of the blood-ward probes at him, contradictions of love and undeniable _hate_ clashing: he's the antithesis, the demon lying in wait, but he's also part Lily's son.

He's part love and hate, part death, part inhumane but driven by human fears and human anger.

The living room is silent besides the rhythmic ticking of the kitchen clock. The domestic setting creates a freeze frame that Lord Voldemort quite obviously does not belong in.

He moves on, up the stairs quickly.

xxx

Tom takes a rough hand, pushing Harry's bangs out of his eyes and away from his forehead: lightning scar.

The boy is sweating, and Tom hopes Harry's distress comes from the night of Voldemort's resurrection.

Voldemort has always been practical. No need to add additional frills for a spec orphan.

He doesn't speak it. Just points, thinks, and _knows_.

 _Adava Kedevra_

* * *

Tom feels the cold again; the same biting freezing that eats out his core. His world is fire and ash and cold and destruction.

Tom's made a mistake. Two mistakes. He has four more chances.

Voldemort is screaming.

* * *

 **A/N: Quick netflix rec and song rec: American Vandal and "take me" by AJ and Ally.**

 **Drop a line if you have the time! -R**


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